The use of lightweight carbon fiber car bodies in BMW’s upcoming electric cars is the focus of a new series of videos produced by the company. The set of 10 videos released on YouTube last week, promote the i3 all-electric compact car and i8 plug-in hybrid sports car.

The BMW Sustainability Hackathon, held at BMW’s Group Technology Office in Mountain View, Calif., was designed to give local software developers, entrepreneurs, EV drivers, and sustainability advocates the opportunity to meet each other, and dream up technology systems that, in the most general sense, promote sustainable transportation. Among the ideas: an app that allows EV drivers to anonymously email each other using license plate numbers as identification.

For the first time ever, German automaker BMW will sell a pair of its vehicles online. In a move designed to reduce costs, both the i3 and i8 will be sold over the Internet. Does a web-based strategy open EVs to new markets, or push electric cars into a perpetual niche?

BMW may have overestimated the popularity of plug-in vehicles and now believes that the "external catalysts" that it was relying on for a successful launch of both the i3 and i8 have "failed to materialize."

Last week, we learned that Audi is cancelling two EVs. Now, BMW is reviewing its electric car plans. The project is safe though. Both the i3 and the i8 will enter production, and BMW knows it would be a PR nightmare to cancel one or the other. But it's impossible to ignore the poor sales of the Nissan LEA

Based on the fixed-roof BMW i8 plug-in hybrid, the BMW i8 Spyder is expected to launch the topless i8 Spyder in 2015. BMW claims the i8 Spyder accelerates from 0 to 62 miles per hour in five seconds and will hit a top speed of 155 mph.

According to UK-based CarMagazine, specs for the upcoming plug-in hybrid BMW i8 are impressive. The i8 will rip from 0 to 62 mph in 4.9 seconds and top out at 156 mph. The leak suggests that the BMW i8 will return up to 86 miles per gallon equivalent on Europe's lenient test cycle.

The BMW i subbrand represents a paradigm shift of everything from how cars are built, to what materials they use, to what kinds of impacts their construction has on the environment, to what kinds of tools they offer drivers. After the attending the unveiling of the first two i cars--the i3 and i8--in Germany last week, 11 discoveries rose to the surface.